I haven’t been to visit Mass MOCA since my college days, but it really is an amazing pace to get married…especially when you’ve got rad art surrounding you!

We met the first day of college and had been together for nearly ten years by the time we walked down the aisle. Our wedding drew on the experiences we had accumulated and the passions we had nurtured together–for art and music, especially–over the years. The venue choice was an easy decision: we agreed that something felt sacred and tranquil about gallery spaces, and we had always loved visiting Mass MoCA. Moreover, we were honored to be the first couple to be married in the incredible Sol LeWitt galleries. In planning everything from the ceremony to the reception, we were particularly eager to blend our separate cultural traditions in ways that reflected how intertwined they had become in our own lives. We think the chuppah embodies this idea beautifully: designed by Andres’ mother, it was hand-embroidered by artisans in Suzhou, China with a poem from the ancient Book of Songs. Friends and family contributed other favorite details, as well. Meredith’s uncle, a New York City-based artist, potato-printed our ketubah as he had his own many years ago. As a wedding gift to ourselves, we worked with Swedish artist Andreas Samuelsson to make a custom print that we displayed at the wedding and used to create table markers and place cards. Each illustration represents a happy memory from our first decade together.

Kate sent me her wedding a few weeks ago, and I’m happy to finally get to post it! It looks like one of those weddings that you’d be so psyched that you just got invited!

I’ve been meaning to send you a few photos of our wedding, held last summer (July 5, 2008) at our house in Vermont, for ages. Michael and I live in Brooklyn and are fiercely devoted to our borough (he owns a company called Neighborhoodies, and I work at Brooklyn Botanic Garden), but our 1823 home in Vermont– Fern Hill– is where our hearts live. We built our wedding from the ground up with friends and family: making the food, putting together the flowers, designing and printing the paper goods, making playlists, and more. The wedding wasn’t only a carnival of love, but a proud productive moment for me, Michael, and our loved ones!

There are so many stories to share. I’ll try to structure some around the photos attached: we had the ceremony on a small hill overlooking a brook, the same spot where Michael proposed in June of 2007. Our officiant was my best friend (and maid of honor’s) mother, who led a Jewish-inflected ceremony that became very emotional for many of our guests, particularly when Michael read an excerpt he chose from Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road.” The end of the ceremony– when he smashed the glass– was pure joy, and we took off running down the hill in a totally strange & unplanned & and wonderful expression of delight!

We worked with a dear friend on creating the dinner menu, which used ingredients almost exclusively from Vermont purveyors. Another friend brought a quart of his famous salad dressing, and yet another drove up our favorite vegan whoopie pies from a bakery in Bethlehem, PA! My ivory lace dress was vintage in perfect condition (and I traded hundreds of dollars in alterations with a wonderful woman I met on Indiebride), and so was Michael’s three-piece navy suit, which came from Rue St. Denis in the East Village. The peony season in Vermont is only about three weeks, but luckily we fell right in the middle of it and bought 125 peonies from a nearby farm in shades of pink and white to arrange alongside soy votives in mason jars and simple glass vases over some old cotton lace I picked up at tag sales around town. My MOH hand-wrote all the place cards and table names, which were the names of New York Times sections (which Michael and I can’t function during the day without reading).

Our photographer, Heather Waraksa, and her second shooter Mike blew us away with their ease, skill, creativity, friendliness and, of course, the quality of the shots. I already have sent too many (and they’re out of order!), but we shot this amazingly cool series at night with sparklers (it was the day after July 4, after all), and some of the portraits they did were mindblowingly gorgeous.